A Message from CEO Scott Dueser:
Safe, sound, and secure: this is what First Financial has been for more than 130 years. Whether it has been the Great Depression, the oil bust, or through numerous economic recessions, we’ve been through it.
For the past 12 years, we are the only bank that has been selected as one of the top seven banks in the country from $5 billion to $50 billion by Bank Director Magazine. Two of those years we were selected number one, and four of those years as number two. On March 11, 2020, Jennifer Demba, one of our analysts from Truist, selected First Financial as one of the top 10 banks in their coverage with the best relative credit loss history and the highest capital levels according to their analysis. We have an extremely high percentage of capital to total assets to 15.39%. This amount of capital is much higher than our peer group and we have consistently outperformed peers, the banks on several key performance metrics.
In 2020, our return on average assets was 1.98% compared to 0.71% for our peers. Return on average equity was 12.93% vs our peers' 6.29%. Our efficiency ratio, which expresses expenses is a portion of tax equivalent revenue, was again solid last year at 45.49% as opposed to our peers' average of 61.58%. We have excellent liquidity and have lines of credit available to draw on from correspondent banks, the Federal Home Loan Bank and other sources. We are certainly prepared to make new loans and advance on existing lines of credit to take care of our customers' liquidity, working capital, and expansion needs.
With all of this said, we do have the experience and expertise to go through times like this to help you take care of your depository, loan, and investment needs with the confidence of putting YOU FIRST.
We highly encourage you to review our 2020 annual report, 10-K, and Proxy which are available in the links below.
F. Scott Dueser
Chairman, President and CEO
First Financial Bankshares, Inc.